Young's grip on House of Prayer followers unyielding

Sunday

May 13, 2018 at 3:36 PMMay 15, 2018 at 11:46 AM

Former residents of the compound on 138th Avenue off Wacahoota Road describe the House of Prayer as a cult and Young as its unquestioned leader.

O.D. Pough was one of the first people to move from the Atlanta area to Waldo with Anna Young and her husband, Jonah, in creating what was supposed to be a utopian community straight from the Bible’s Book of Acts: Residents would have all things in common and have no need or want.

Young gave everyone at the House of Prayer, which later moved to Micanopy, biblical names. O.D. Pough became Elder Adam.

Like the Bible’s Adam, Pough may have fallen to temptation. He was accused by Young of having sex with a woman at the House of Prayer and she ordered him to cut off his penis.

So, relatives told authorities, Pough iced it and did the cutting himself.

“(Young) was using that scripture if your hand offend you, you cut it off; if your eye, you pluck it out. And she had my daddy like he was doomed,” said O.D. Pough’s daughter, Sharon, in an interview with the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. “And so he was out in one of those cabins. And yeah, he about died out there. But he did — he cut himself. Just — the bleeding, the infection. The infection was terrible.”

Yet, Elder Adam stayed. Sharon Pough stayed and so did her brother, Thomas Pough. They and others stayed despite experiencing or witnessing beatings, forced lengthy fasting, severe abuse and starvation of children and discipline that included being locked in a small box for days on end with no food or water.

Young, 76, is now in the Alachua County Jail on a charge of murdering Emon Harper, a toddler she renamed Moses who was living at the House of Prayer compound, through starvation and beating around 1988 or 1989.

Former residents of the compound on 138th Avenue off Wacahoota Road describe the House of Prayer as a cult and Young as its unquestioned leader.

Cult is a nebulous term and labeling an organization as one can be tricky — consider Scientology, for example.

But Young’s persona and dictatorial actions, along with the response from her followers, sure fit the bill, said Stephen Kent, a University of Alberta sociology professor who studies cults.

The domination of the leader is so complete that people will kill themselves on his orders — Jim Jones' followers drinking the cyanide Kool-Aid in Guyana; or endure extreme abuse including sexual abuse of children — David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.

Members who are under the leader’s spell buy so completely into what he or she says and does that it blinds them to horrors going on around them.

“After people fall within these leaders’ social orbits, these abusers slowly convince followers that they are sinners destined for hell unless they have their evil natures punished and purged,” Kent wrote in an email to The Sun. “If these abuses take place in isolated compounds, and if members have weak ties with the outside world, then the abusive subculture of the cult begins to feel normal. For both practical and emotional reasons, therefore, leaving becomes extremely difficult, even dangerous. In the minds of true believers, defection justifies retaliation.”

Joy Fluker, Young’s daughter, said as much.

Fluker was a pre-teen when the family moved to Florida to start House of Prayer. In December 2016, decades after Young fled Micanopy with Fluker to evade an arrest warrant for child abuse, Fluker called the Sheriff's Office and relived her early life for investigators.

Once-repressed memories had come back to Fluker as she got older, including memories of the suffering.

“It was the way we lived. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it at the time. It wasn’t anything that was abnormal to me — we were our own little kingdom and she was the queen,” Fluker said The Sun. “As I started getting older, I wanted to be accepted by other people. I realized we were different.”

Fluker blames mental illness for her mother’s actions. It runs in the family and became worse after her father, Robert, died, she said. He assumed the biblical name of Jonah and The Sun reported in 1988 that he died when a truck reportedly slipped off a jack and crushed him.

Young would order men living at House of Prayer to beat other men, women and the children with church members holding the victims as the beatings occurred.

Discipline for some was being locked in a box that was in a barn or a trucking trailer with no food or water. The box was about the size of a small table and several feet tall.

Sharon Pough was sentenced to the box several times but as she got older, she started challenging Young and then eventually left when she was about 30. Her father and brother remained until Young fled because she was wanted on a child abuse charge for bathing a 12-year-old girl, Nikki Nickelson, in a tub with bleach, causing burns.

Young was eventually located and convicted years later. She was sentenced to time served in the jail awaiting trial, about six months. She has already spent nearly six months in jail since her December arrest.

People who lived at the House of Prayer heard scripture from Young day and night. Believers may find scripture coming back to haunt Young.

Former House of Prayer members helping with the case against Young say they are leaving the avenging up to God. Revenge is not their motive. They said they talked to authorities because, however late, it is the right thing to do.

Easing their guilt might be another factor.

Kent said he has interviewed many former cult members whose personalities changed when they left.

“They would get drawn into these groups deeper and deeper. Some would be complete bastards in the group and when they come out they are contrite and apologetic and feel terrible about what they did,” Kent said. “In some ways, parents may never forgive themselves for getting involved with that group. No doubt, some of them are talking about it out of guilt. They have been in a position in their life where they’ve processed it enough so they can speak. And the social climate is different now with people talking increasingly about abuse.”

Editor's note: The online version of this story has been changed to correct Anna Young's age.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.